Go Queensland: How to create jobs

IF the State Government agreed to do this one, controversial thing, we would have a jobs bonanza greater than the ­mining workforce at the peak of the boom. Vote in our poll.

• Queensland economy: Asset sales a political poison
• Queensland economy: Bernard Salt’s report on Queensland
• Queensland economy: Asset sales needs marketing

SELLING Queensland’s state-owned assets and using the money to build new infrastructure would create a jobs bonanza greater than the ­mining workforce at the peak of the boom.

More than 113,000 workers could be employed on economy-boosting new projects by re-investing the proceeds from electricity transmission and distribution networks, water utilities and ports, new analysis shows.

Queensland economy: Bernard Salt’s report on Queensland

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At its height, the resources sector workforce hit 80,000.

“The Government and ­Opposition are both currently opposing asset sales, but that means they’re really opposing infrastructure and jobs,’’ Infrastructure Partnerships Australia chief executive officer Brendan Lyon said.

“There’s a large, skilled workforce coming off the tools in Queensland’s mineral regions that should be moving straight on to road, rail and hospital projects in SEQ and the rest of the state, but can’t because the Budget can’t afford it.”

Infrastructure Partnerships Australia analysis, conducted exclusively for The Courier-Mail, values Queensland’s publicly owned assets at $66.8 billion, based on the sale of New South Wales’ TransGrid electricity transmission network in November.

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Even after clearing the ­corporations debt, $43.5 billion would be available for the Queensland Government to re-invest in new roads, railways, hospitals, schools and other vital infrastructure once the Federal Government’s 15 per cent asset-recycling scheme was included.

It is more than the $35 billion earmarked for the next four years in the new State Infrastructure Plan.

“If Queensland got real on asset recycling and put the money into infrastructure, it could deliver more than 110,000 construction jobs and $65 billion in economic output,’’ Mr Lyon said. “But instead, Queensland is being ranked as a third-tier economy by the major banks, alongside Tasmania.’’

Mr Lyon said it should be a no-brainer for a state facing a dramatic transition from ­resources-driven investment, crippling congestion pressures and the highest level of debt as a percentage of operating ­revenue of any state.

“It is essential because people need transport infrastructure and social infrastructure like good hospitals and education facilities to support quality of life,” Mr Lyon said.

“By recycling assets, you could unblock the fiscal ­constipation the state is suffering where nothing is ­happening and there is no forward planning.’’

Queenslanders had only to look at NSW to see what was possible. The $10.3 billion proceeds from the TransGrid deal were now being used to fund a decade-long pipeline of work, including motorway projects that had been on the drawing board since the 1960s.

The Infrastructure Partnerships Australia report also suggested that selling the ­electricity networks could achieve $179 million of cost savings per year, leading to lower power bills, as had resulted from privatisation in Victoria and South Australia.

“They will be more effectively and efficiently run. ­People have not been protected by public ownership; they have been penalised,’’ Mr Lyon said.

There had never been a better time to put the assets on the market with overseas ­sovereign wealth funds, ­Australian superannuation groups and other potential ­investors competing heavily and record low interest rates.

Gene Tunny of Adept Economics said: “With congestion ever increasing on our transport networks and other pressing needs, there may well be opportunities for asset recycling, so the Government should definitely consider it.” Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland spokesman Nick Behrens said: “One of the absolute casualties of the last state election was asset sales.

“Unfortunately, we now have a government which thinks it has a mandate not to privatise assets even though it has only 42 out of 89 seats in Parliament. But as Queensland falters and New South Wales prospers, it will increasingly highlight the benefits we are missing out on. If there was an infrastructure State of Origin, we will come off ­second best by a long way.’’

Infrastructure Association of Queensland CEO Steve Abson said that the “virtuous cycle’’ of asset sales and ­re-investment was much more widely discussed and understood south of the border, allowing informed decisions­.

An IAQ taskforce was studying future infrastructure funding options.

“This is certainly one of those that Queensland should be considering,’’ it said.